


THE TRUTH IS

by wants2die



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, It's Not Good, and i just now found it, i wrote this in the summer between sixth and seventh grade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:54:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5265074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wants2die/pseuds/wants2die
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i wrote this when i was eleven or twelve based on an article about google glass. i found it again today and i sort of don't hate it. the premise of this story is that, many years into the future, people develop glasses that can see people's secrets, and this is one person's internal rambling about truth.</p>
    </blockquote>





	THE TRUTH IS

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this when i was eleven or twelve based on an article about google glass. i found it again today and i sort of don't hate it. the premise of this story is that, many years into the future, people develop glasses that can see people's secrets, and this is one person's internal rambling about truth.

Lying was wrong, so we stopped lying. Secrets were wrong, so we stopped having them.

Privacy was right/wrong, but we stopped that anyway. (Some decisions aren’t black or white, but they must be made for The Greater Good. We must be made for The Greater Good.)

Sacrifices have to be made. They’re as inevitable as oblivion. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have privacy anymore, we don’t have bad lies and horrible secrets and awful things like that anymore either, and that’s good. People would have called that compromise, long ago, but we don’t have compromises anymore.

My glasses rest on the table beside me. They are the truth of our world, the arbiter of fate. They tell us not to take them off. They say that these are good for our society. They act like it’s not tearing our world apart.

Aunt Sharon used to tell us stories when we were little, Zacharie and me.

She told us about a world of lies, where people could show who they wanted to be rather than who they were. She said all this with a disapproving look, and when she finished her stories she would always remind us that this was paradise, but I would always fall asleep dreaming of that world that seemed so far away from paradise. What we have is paradise. Except it doesn’t feel very much like it.

My legs are weak when I stand up, and I stumble a little as I take a cautious first few steps. It’s been a while since I’ve stood up.

Going out of the house scares me. People wear their glasses like badges of honor, give me accusing stares and horrified looks. They know all my secrets from a single glance.

There were other stories I was told when I was a tiny boy.

I can remind, faintly, my mum leaning over my bed while I was on the cusp of sleep, her glasses resting on the bed behind her, and whispering stories into my ears. Stories about a man who wore no glasses, who lived in a time when glasses didn’t exist, but could still tell a person’s history from a single stare. I would stare at her in wonder, and maybe horror. Mister Holmes, that was his name.

Now everyone is like that man. Their glasses have become a part of them. The odd metal frames and wavy glass lenses encoded with technology that works like magic are as dear to them as their own flesh. Perhaps more so. Perhaps they would trade humanity for truth. (Perhaps we already have.)

It’s sickening, but it’s hard to focus on it.

Whenever I leave the house I have to wear the glasses. It was made a federal law several years ago. Anyone found not wearing their government appointed glasses will be subject to a fine of up to 75 truths.

I try to stare at the ground, not at my fellow wandering people. The notes that come spiraling up anytime my gaze falls upon another human disgust me. I don’t care if the man (Steven Markets, my glasses inform me) standing next to me on the transport is having an affair with his secretary’s husband. I don’t care about them.

I don’t want them. I don’t want this knowledge. It is too much.

When I was little, before I got my glasses, I thought that they were wonderful. Of course I did; anyone can believe something when it’s been spoon-fed to them since they were born. Our whole world revolves around these glasses. I didn’t have a _choice_ but to think they were wonderful.

I thought that once I had them, everything would be alright. I would finally know what people thought of me. It was like being able to read minds, only better, I thought.

I thought that they were the most important thing about me, once I finally turned nine.

Now I knew that Felicia Davies didn’t really like me, that Melody Adams had kissed a boy, that Seth Duncan had too. For the first few months, it was wonderful. Magic. Everyone else in my grade was younger than me, so I was the only one who had them. I walked among them with an arrogant smirk, displaying my glasses as if they were a mark of honor rather than cowardice.

That’s what we are, cowards. I’m a coward. I have too many secrets.

I don’t go outside much, anymore, because I know they will be looking at me, and they will know. They will know things like _the first time a girl touched me there, I was five_ and _my wife didn’t leave the country, she’s buried in the backyard_ and _the scars on my neck are from her nails as she clutched at me and screamed for me to let her go_.

I did not fit into The Greater Good. I was not part of their plans. I was a coward, I did not want the truth. I wanted things I shouldn’t have wanted.

I didn’t want to kill her. Really, I didn’t. She didn’t deserve to die. She was a kind woman, and, I imagine, a beautiful one, although all I could see were her secrets when I looked at her.

This is what they’ve done to us, don’t you see? They’ve taken our brains hostage and poured our secrets out of us. They’ve torn us down to our base desires and our worst nightmares come true, and judged us on that.

Is this the price we pay for truth?


End file.
